Entries Tagged 'Wednesday is Friends Day' ↓

Remember the classic children’s book by P.D. Eastman where the baby bird left the nest, searching for his mother? The hatchling wandered from dog to boat to car to power shovel asking, “Are you my mother?” This was an ineffective and frightening way to conduct his search. (Don’t worry — the book has a happy ending!)

As bloggers, we need to know who our target audience is, where they are, what they need, and how we can help them, but searching for them in the are-you-my-mother manner can become as ineffective and frightening as the little bird’s adventure.

Today’s Wednesday is Friends Day post will share tips on how to find your audience, create an audience profile, discover their needs, and determine what you can do to help them.

Steps to finding your target audience:

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In ancient Rome, the Forum was the place to connect with others in the community. It served as the center of commerce as well as the political hub. The Forum was where the town gathered.

The modern blogging community isn’t much different. Forums are one of the best places to connect with your target audience. Those who frequent forums tend to be more passionate about their interest in a blog’s topic than those who simply stop by and read a post from time to time.

Here are 10 ways forum participation can help bloggers:

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I was blessed to be born into a family of book lovers. “Books are our friends,” I was taught. And libraries and schools across the country are celebrating the love of books this week through the Read Across America program, initiated in honor of one of the best-loved authors who ever put pen to paper, Dr. Seuss.

On this Wednesday is Friends Day, let’s look at six lessons we bloggers can learn from our friend, Dr. Seuss:

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It’s easier to navigate the maze of online social media sites if you understand the different site categories and the purpose of each type. The social media world consists of two segments: social and media. To optimize your experience with each type of social media, it’s best to participate in the communities you choose to join.

Today’s post supplies a list of 23 types of social media, including a brief explanation of the purpose and at least one example of each type. This list will help you determine which types of social media sites would best benefit your situation. Nearly all social media sites offer free memberships.

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Despite the waning popularity of respect in today’s society, the online community tends to enforce a set of unwritten “rules” of social media. Those who ignore or blatantly break these rules will be punished either by being exiled into the land of de-friend/un-follow or publicly blasted for rudeness (yes, that seems a bit hypocritical, but it happens). Before we delve too deep into our social media series, let’s take a few minutes to go over a few ways to make new friends and keep the old.

The Golden Rule of social media is — “Give More than You Receive.” All relationships are give and take, but statistics have proven that those who give online far more than they take gain the respect of others, which in turn spreads their influence and grows their communities. In my free report “Taming the TwitterBeast in 20 Minutes a Day,” I briefly mentioned a suggested 7-1 ratio of information tweets to personal promotion tweets. People who tweet one link after another that leads directly to a sales page are quickly unfollowed. That ratio seems to be a pretty good guideline, not only for Twitter, but for all social media platforms.

If someone were to write the Social Media Book of Etiquette, it would include the following 18 tips:

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